Studio of Documentary Photography 4

Display Schedule

Subject guarantor

Markéta KINTEROVÁ

Name of lecturer(s)

Markéta KINTEROVÁ

Learning outcomes of the course unit

Form and expression tools are very broad: analysis of exercises, screening works related to the topic, independent creative work from the traditional concept of a documentary, often bound to the socially corresponding topics, through to documentary changes and shifts in society, lifestyle, ecology, topography of a location to the subjective expression of relations to the immediate surroundings or the world in general.

Mode of study

Each class a society-wide topic is outlined which is the primary content of the meetings and this is viewed from many perspectives. Through regular consultations, lectures and workshops during each semester, students gain a glimpse into the topics and present them in their own creative proposals aiming to bring their project to its final form. Individual guests contribute to instruction with their presentations/lectures on selected issues in discussion, subsequent workshops, participation in selected consultations or participation in a summary commission. Through consultations, debate, etc. together a framework is created for a summary or graduation piece. The current status may be maintained but if instruction is to be progressive in character, this is not the roll of the instructor, but this concerns innovation and the exhausting of influences and sharing experience by professionals in other fields.

Prerequisites and co-requisites

General knowledge of the history of the fine arts and photography; general knowledge of visual arts theory; analytical review skills, creativity; desire to develop and go beyond the learned scheme or one's signature.

Course contents

Documentary photography includes a whole range of interpretation and approaches. Beginning with an effort to capture reality, emphasis on realism or subordinating intention of a particular concept or ideology. Documentary photography has undergone great development, particularly in the last century and in the Czech tradition it stands on real expression milestones. It is important to include this tradition among resources, rare among the current starting points. Allan Sekula, 40 years ago pointed out the relationship of the photographer to documentary photography or social photography in the failure of the aesthetics of realism, which paradoxically places depicted individuals in the role of passive victims, as for decades under the influence of media as observers and receivers of these visual reports, we are rather resistent. This perspective must be revisited, revise and find another starting point and manner of documenting events around us.

Works arising from the studio are to present queries social in nature, critically limit problematic and burning issues of contemporary society and as well investigate new commmunications channels of presentation ( from an exhibition project, orginal publication, published in media, online publication, etc.)

The project aim in this intimate elite group of students is to have the opportunity to meet with top-ranking artists in their field, and through multi-study and multi-genre links arrive to an open form of a final result combining photography, up to now, rather unusual form of collaboration. Photography, currently, is not just an aesthetic opportunity but a broadly spread media across many fields, professions and societies.

Course instruction innovations are to provide a broad space for conceptual and artistic approaches in the photography media for pure trade skills in recording events and as well to set a high bar for execution quality of the whole (pubication, exhibit installation, collaboration with FSV, etc.) and knowledge of the context and argument for free approach. The studio is to be a think tank for beginning documentary projects up to ephemeral non-material projects which may border on utopian, but apply principles of thought about photography; documentary approach.

Recommended or required reading

Alberro, Alexander - Norvell, Patricia (ed.): Recording Conceptual Art, Berkeley, Los Angeles a London: University of California Press, 2001

Alberro, Alexander, Sabeth Buchmann: Art After Conceptual Art, MIT Press, Cambridge and London, 2006

Fried Michael: Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before, Yale University Press, New Haven 2008

Bourriaud, Nicolas: Postprodukce, Praha: Tranzit, 2004

Bourriaud, Nicolas: Relational Aesthetics, Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2002 Cotton Charlotte: The Photography as Contemporary Art, London, Thames Hudson, 2004

Císař, Karel (ed): Co je to fotografie? Herrmann a synové, Praha 2004 Foster, Hal (ed): Postmodern Culture, London: Pluto Press, 1990

Foster, Hal; Krauss, Rosalind; Bois, Yves-Alain; Buchloh, Benjamin H.D.: Art since 1900, London: Thames & Hudson, 2004

Michel Frizot: Nouvelle Histoire de la Photographie, Larousse-Bordas, Paris, 1996

Grygar Štěpán, Konceptuální umění a fotografie, Praha, AMU, 2004

Petříček Miroslav: Myšlení obrazem, Herrmann a synové, Praha 2009 Silverio, Robert: Postmoderní fotografie, Praha: AMU, 2007

Liz Wells. The Photography Reader, Routledge, London, 2003

Wall, Jeff: Selected Essays and Interviews, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007

Assessment methods and criteria

Students may be graded based on attendance 70% and participation in group excursions.

Note

Topics for Summer semester: Arts research and engaged practice:

1. Collaboration with FSV - briefly: Arts reasearch and visual social sciences

Collaboration with the FAMU Photography Dept (Documentary Photography studio) and Dept. of Sociology ISS FSV UK in collective arts and research endeavors. Instruction will through projects. FAMU and FSV students create several mixed teams in which they will together works on the implementation of a selected research project. The intended and preferred result of the semester's work is an exhibition with accompanying discussion program, other justified result forms are possible.

1. Extract from Politika Pravdy: 1 evening video screening in a gallery etc. - selection from the Politika Pravdy series.

Series exhibit and screening with the name Politika Pravdy deals with documentary strategies in contemporary artistic videos and opens up questions of how a form is experienced as a documentary related to truth and how to change the form. Documentarianism in art asks how documentary practice is a tool of political behaviour and how the art finds manners through which balances the loss of trust in the representation of reality.

1. On location and excursion Art for Climate: Northern Bohemia - Horní Jiřetín, Litvínov, Most - April 2019

Collaboration with limits; that's us / Art for Climate. The project aim is through the language of art to bring to the public, the impact of coal mining on the climate, the region and individual personal fortunes. Buring coal is one of the main causes for climate change, one of the greatest challenges that humanity faces. Coal mining has a fundamental impace on the locality - fertile land transformed into a moonlike terrain, dozens of ghost towns, thousands of people have lost their homes, changes in the social order of the entire region.

Semester topics: Public space

1. Tomáš Moravec - series of workshops + exhibition

Tomáš Moravec workshop aims to develop among participants a discussion on the changes and function of public space. The target areas are not inveterately known and routinely visited places, but rather areas on the periphery of civil interest. An outline of a dystopic vision of the environment in which it is impossible to further produce any free gester and use shared space with poetic activity is possible if we try to return to an active engagement. The exhibition is to provide students with a taste of collaboration and discussion about changes and functions of public spaces.

1. Selected guest lecture - presentation of selected festivals and projects in public spaces with a focus on the changes of the region, countryside or urban „ecosystem“.
2. Selected guest lecture - questions of rights in relation to public spaces issues. Debate about legal use of public space for arts activities. What is public space and limits of activities in it according to the law. Issues of „Pops“ (privately owned pubic space), quasi-public space, majority ownership by development companies.

Schedule for winter semester 2018/2019:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

Schedule for summer semester 2018/2019:

• Week view
• List

The subject is a part of the following study plans

• Photography CZ - Bachelor - 1819 (required optional subject)